Stoneheart
Fictional character biography Early life Pauline Duran was born in Crystal City to Shawn and Shauna Duran, who both worked as sculptors until they both died during a fire at the building where they worked. Growing up alone, Pauline eventually became a chemist working for a pharmaceutical company. However one fateful night she was present during a shipment of potions for the Crystal City Scientific Testing Facility. She accidentally spilled a potion contaminated by some unknown organic substance on her left hand. Dismissing it at first, she returned to her flat and found that the substance had now extended over her forearm. To her dismay, her arm began to turn into a stone-like material still capable of movement. The following night she went to the hospital, now with the entire left side of her body now covered by the stone-like material. She was distraught when the doctors told her that they could not help her. She blamed the Scientific Testing Facility for her deformity, however she did not have the money to sue the facility. Later she was fired by the pharmaceutical company. As the weeks went by, Pauline's body was completely covered with the stone-like material, and to her shock, she found that she had tremendous strength and the ability to fly. Feeling like a freak of nature, Pauline decided to take matters into her own hands and exact her revenge. Using her new abilities, Pauline first destroyed the pharmacy where she used to work. A few days later she made an attack on the Testing Facility, destroying one fifth of the entire facility. Soon the media was starting to take notice, and dubbed the stone woman Stoneheart and has been described as "a beautiful piece of art relentless on destruction". Realizing that she can never go back to her old life as a chemist, Pauline decided to go with the flow and continue her new career as a criminal terrorist. So she began a crime spree across the city, robbing banks, destroying buildings and terrorizing citizens. Stoneheart Pauline Duran, now going under the alias Stoneheart moved out of her old flat and built a hideout in the beach caves of Crystal City. During her last bank robbery, she made her first encounter with the Crystal League, who underestimated Stoneheart's capabilities and were defeated before she escaped. Later while she was gathering the money that she stole, one of the members of the Crystal League, X-Ray, finds her secret hideout, but would later become a hostage of Stoneheart. She kept X-Ray prisoner in her lair as she continued her crime spree, until X-Ray developed her ability of telepathic communication and telepathically alerted the rest of the team of her whereabouts. When Stoneheart returned she found that she had been caught in an ambush, encountering the Crystal League in her own hideout. She was simply outnumbered by the team, and had no choice but to retreat. Humiliated by her defeat in the hands of the Crystal League, Stoneheart went in search of a new hideout. At this point she flew out of the Earth's atmosphere, discovering that she no longer had to breathe to survive. So Stoneheart made a new hideout on the Earth's Moon before returning to Crystal City with a vengeance. Roaming the city streets, Stoneheart encountered and attacked Avalanche, leaving her unconscious before the rest of the team found them. Stoneheart made a hasty retreat back to the Moon, but not without being followed by Fly Girl, who also found that she no longer required to breathe to survive. The two battled on the Earth's Moon, and when it looked like Fly Girl was going to be overpowered by Stoneheart, Fly Girl somehow mustered the strength to overpower Stoneheart, and managed to knock her flying back down to Earth. However Fly Girl was too late to follow Stoneheart, so she did not know where Stoneheart landed on Earth. Fly Girl returned to Crystal City and broke the news of Stoneheart's disappearance to her peers, but they all knew that they had not seen the last of Stoneheart. Hiding in the abandoned Crystal City lighthouse, Stoneheart hears on the news that the Crystal League have been discovered by the public, and as a result, have been forced to retire. However she was unsatisfied with the fact that they have only retired and have not been perished. So with little knowledge of the whereabouts of the former team members, Stoneheart forms a plan to bring them out of hiding. She infiltrated the mayor's office and held the mayor hostage, making various demands to the authorities, knowing full well that the team will have no choice but to step into action. However her anticipation was delayed as the hostage situation was held longer than she expected, until finally the Crystal League returned, catching Stoneheart off guard and forcing her to retreat. However now with the Crystal League back in action, now no longer hiding from the public, Stoneheart knew that she could not defeat them alone. Stoneheart takes over a large criminal organization in the hopes of using them to steal a device called a Collapso-Ray, which was capable of shrinking a target to unimaginable sizes. Meanwhile Stoneheart decided to bust another advesary of the Crystal League, the former criminal mastermind named the Tarantula, out of prison and form an alliance. And so Stoneheart's plans went into fruition as the Tarantula lured the heroes into their trap. However the deadly duo's plan backfires as the Collapso-Ray instead targetted Stoneheart, rapidly shrinking her until she vanished. Although the Tarantula managed to escape, Stoneheart continued to shrink until she found herself in an entirely new world. Stoneheart found herself in a microscopic universe known as the Microverse and was welcomed by the residents who stopped her from shrinking any further. However rather than thanking them for saving her, Stoneheart uses her new size advantage to conquer the Microverse as the new empress. She reigned for 3 months before she found a way to bring her enemies, the Crystal League, to the Microverse. Using the Microverse technology she shrinks the team until she could hold all members on her index finger and enslaves them. However the tiny heroes later encouraged the residents of the Microverse to rise against their new empress's reign of terror, forcing Stoneheart out of her reign and inadvertently growing her back to her normal size in Crystal City. While the Crystal League were rewarded by the Microverse residents by being returned to their normal sizes, Stoneheart escapes and retreats into the unknown once more. After 4 months of hiding in the abandoned lighthouse, Stoneheart discovers the hidden location of the Crystal League's hideout. After secretly following Whiz Kid into the Crystal Fortress, Stoneheart opens her attack on the remaining members of the team, which only included Whiz Kid and Avalanche (Bolt and Fly Girl were absent while Frostbite and X-Ray were unconscious at the time). After defeating Avalanche early on, Stoneheart threatens to kill either the unconscious Frostbite or X-Ray, making Whiz Kid choose amongst themselves which one they want to live. However this backfires as Avalanche returns and knocks Stoneheart out of the fortress. Before she could be taken into custody however she manages to retreat, escaping capture once again. Platinum League Stoneheart later encountered former Crystal League member, Tele-Kid, in her hideout, and accepted his offer to join him in the formation of the Platinum League in an attempt to rival their enemies. During the battle against the Crystal League, Stoneheart was chosen to battle against Fly Girl. The fight took the two into the skies until Stoneheart was caught in the middle of a storm made during the battle between Hailstone and Cria-Tura, causing her to fall unconscious. She was mistaken to be deceased and was buried in the cemetary several weeks after the Crystal League defeated the rest of the Platinum League. Several months later Stoneheart wakes up, finding herself buried underground. After breaking herself free she returns to Crystal City, suffering from a severe case of amnesia. With no memory of her past, Stoneheart wreaks havoc across the city, later holding the new mayor hostage. Later Stoneheart begins to have flashbacks of her past, remembering several of her encounters with the Crystal League, as well as the whereabouts of the Crystal Fortress. So in a fit of rage, Stoneheart infiltrates the fortress and attacks the team of heroes, but is once again defeated after being rendered unconscious by a spell cast by an enraged Whiz Kid. However rather than making the same mistake as before, Stoneheart was taken into a specialized prison cell for the first time in her life, where she remained unconscious for well nearly 2 years. After nearly 2 years in prison, Stoneheart finally awakens, still suffering from amnesia. Confused about her existence in the world, Stoneheart flies back to the Earth's Moon, where she was once again followed by Fly Girl, who later fell back to Earth after a brief sudden loss of her powers. Stoneheart remained on the moon until Fly Girl returned, now more powerful than ever, and was battered until she gained her full memory back, but not without being defeated and being taken into custody and being put into a greatly improved specialized cell where she remained ever vengeful against the Crystal League. After several months in prison, Stoneheart was released by a wealthy billionaire named Maximillion Schroeder, who revealed to her his plan to reform the Platinum League and take control of Crystal City while the Crystal League were trapped in a virtual world created by Emaou Yokoyama. So for several months, Stoneheart remained as a lieutenant of the Platinum League, alongside Red Ghost and Master Man, while she kept Zabrina the Magician, an ally to the team of heroes, in the same cell that she was kept in case of an emergency. Zabrina was attached to a device created by Schroeder which, if triggered, could send millions of volts through her body. When the news got out that the Crystal League have been freed from their virtual capitivity, the entire Platinum League prepared for the inevitable battle that was to come. Stoneheart knew that Whiz Kid would be looking for the love of his life, and so she released Zabrina the Magician from captivity and forced her to battle against the team leader as Stoneheart battled with her old partner in crime, Tele-Kid. However as Stoneheart begun to realize that she was not a match for the duo, she rendered Zabrina unconscious (using the device attached to her) and retreated back to Maximillion Schroeder's lair, reunited herself with her fellow partners in the Platinum League, including the man that she had fallen deeply in love with recently, the Heart Breaker. Several weeks later the Crystal League discover the location of Maximillion Schroeder's lair, where they engage in a huge battle with the Platinum League. Stoneheart managed to escape before being captured, while the rest of the Platinum League suffered a crushing defeat in the hands of their enemies. As Crystal City slowly returned to normal, most of the criminals were put back behind bars, as some others disappeared into the unknown. Stoneheart returned to her old hideout in the abandoned lighthouse where she slowly became obsessed with the Heart Breaker to the point of which she needed to be with him once more. And so after several months of waiting for the right opportunity, Stoneheart decided to bust her love out of prison. Crystal League Stoneheart confessed her love to the Heart Breaker, who assigned her as his new partner in crime in a showing of gratitude for busting him out of prison. And so the duo began a crime spree across the city, rebuilding the Heart Breaker's fallen criminal organization. Stoneheart was willing to do whatever the Heart Breaker desired until he rebuilt his organization and had no further use for her. When this news came to Stoneheart, the Heart Breaker was already long gone, and even his thugs were nowhere to be seen. Upset over the betrayal of her love, Stoneheart returned to hiding in the lighthouse, sobbing to herself and secretly planning her revenge, this time however not against the Crystal League, but against the Heart Breaker, the man who took her heart and then threw it to the ground. After weeks of hiding, Stoneheart discovers that the Heart Breaker has returned to Crystal City, now with a completely new look, storming across the city with the objective to search and destroy Stoneheart. Desperate for revenge now than ever, the stone-skinned hermit approaches her old enemies, the Crystal League, and requests if she could join the team in taking the villain down. So now alongside the Crystal League, Stoneheart ultimately defeated the Heart Breaker's new crime family and confronted her former love one on one. He was left for dead after being heavily beaten up by Stoneheart, but rather than finishing the job, Stoneheart was convinced to leave the authorities to take care of him, thus making her an honorary member of the Crystal League, even though Avalanche was not convinced that Stoneheart had turned over a new leaf. Stoneheart continued her career as a member of the Crystal League, inadvertently causing alot of arguements amongst the team, until they managed to help the military to subdue an alien known only as the Sol of Sundoon. While the team sought to find out more about the alien visitor, Stoneheart infiltrates the military base and steals the Bronze Stone, an item of which Sol gained all of his powers from, thus giving her all of Sol's powers. Stoneheart uses these powers to wreak havoc across Crystal City until she discovers that the Crystal League have all reunited and have managed to bust Sol of out containment in an attempt to defeat Stoneheart once more. After a huge battle spread across the entire city, Stoneheart loses control of the Bronze Stone, thus losing Sol's powers and falls into a deep coma as she sinks into the sea. The Crystal League were unable in saving Stoneheart, who remained in the middle of the ocean like an old relic. As the world prepares for another new year, Stoneheart finally awakens from a coma that lasted well over a year itself, only to find herself washed up in the shores of Aprilton after being mistaken by a group of scavengers as a statue. Confused about her whereabouts, Stoneheart is confronted by a villain named the Dark Knight, who offers Stoneheart to team up with him and wreak havoc across Aprilton. And so they do, later putting the blame on the two members of the Crystal League, Fly Girl and Frostbite, who have been travelling across the country since the apparent death of Silver Frost. However to their surprise, the duo forms an alliance with the local heroes of Aprilton, Nitro and Bullet, and defeats the team of the Dark Knight and Stoneheart. However Stoneheart manages to escape and return to Crystal City just in time for new year's day. On new year's day, Stoneheart returned on Crystal City in a fit of rage and wreak havoc across the city and defeating the three remaining members of the Crystal League, Whiz Kid, Bolt and Avalanche. However before she could be do anymore harm, Frostbite and Fly Girl return to help their partners in the battle. Suffering yet another defeat in the hands of the Crystal League seemed to have driven Stoneheart completely insane, and as a result, has been kept in a specialized cell in the Crystal City mental institution ever since. Powers and abilities During a chemical shipment Pauline Duran accidentally spilled an unknown organic substance on her left hand, causing a mutagenic reaction that permanently transformed her entire body into living stone. As a result, Pauline initially gained superhuman strength, flight and physical durability, even against the rigors of deep space, and loses the need to eat or breathe. She also has a degree in chemistry. Other versions Spiritual Rebirth Stoneheart was one of the few villains to be cloned and morphed into a minion of Trastámara Aragon to battle the Crystal League. Trivia * Before gaining her powers, Pauline Duran had green eyes and long, ginger hair. She was also 170cm tall and weighed 64.8kg. * Stoneheart was the first human female to enter the Microverse. * Stoneheart's eyes are the only part of her body not to be transformed into living stone. Other than that, even her heart is made of living stone. Category:Characters Category:Female Characters Category:Rogues & Villains Category:Crystal City Residents Category:1970s Births